


champagne apocalypse

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, M/M, Poetry, dont know if its important that i tag that bc they get high like once, drink different kinds of bubbly wine and read books, they do mostly lovely things actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i think we’re hollowing eachother out, is the thing," louis says after a long time. his fingers feel like as if the blood in them has frozen to ice. wonders if that can actually happen.<br/>“let me tell you what i think,” zayn says, looking out over the feather snow falling, “i think you were hollow before him.”</p><p>or, harry and louis have this destructive, doomed, brooky relationship that louis knows is going to end</p>
            </blockquote>





	champagne apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> hii!! thankyou to ali for being so enthusiastic about this, i'm glad i finally finsihed it! im sorry i find this kind of hopeless love so romantic

the first time louis meets harry he knows three things:

first, that harry is going to completely ruin him.

second, that harry is going to break, doing so.

the third one, louis feels awfully sure of. that harry is a _breaker. the kind that shatters into a thousand pieces. the kind that turns into a million glass splinters for a moment, still in the air like living art._ he can see it— the way harry is a diamond— right through his milky skin. the loud laugh and cherry lips and eyes that have the colour of seaweed through water.

louis tells harry this, tells him about the colour of the seaweed through the clear ocean of ibiza when he was there earlier this spring.

harry nodds, languid like the air is thicker here. he’s only seventeen, louis learns, and offcourse. like a tree, legs shooting up through the sky in long, thick limbs, and broad shoulders hunching forward. louis smiles because he can see the tsunami wave coming but he can’t run and it’s okay. it feels calm. we’re all going to die.

  
///

  
the second time louis meets harry is a weekend later, on his own rooftop this time, instead of liam’s. the whole week has been the kind of sunny that makes the nights clear and shiny. it’s just in the beggining of may and they’re all out, for the first time in ages. partys indoors are never as fun.

he’s thinking more _ocean_ than tree today, and it’s all a bit slurred, but harry has this salty champagne tongue and doe eyes and this seaside perfume. when he laughs, louis sees that it isn’t like the air is thicker here— no, it’s like harry’s laughing through water.

  
their bodies are bathing in the green and yellow lights of louis’ roof’s spotlights. the stars are out, too, and they’re rubbing against eachother as if the apocalypse is on it’s way but it’s alright.

(they’ve been doomed since forever and they can leave all the other things for later— watching the stars and reading and painting skin and going to biza)

  
///

  
“do you think niall and zayn are getting high in your bathroom?” harry asks, eyes all innocent and wild at the same time and so very seventeen.

  
“at six in the afternoon?” louis chirps, and it’s in moments like these when he feels as painfully rich as he is. when the sky out is honey-cream coloured and making the piano shine gold where it isn’t deep black. so shiny, the piano, and the floor, and the windows. eveything in louis’ house is shiny and polished and beautiful, and harry, only weeks after being here the first time, is taking after, it’s the hair, getting greasier, and the long coats louis’ has bought him.

harry shruggs, long fingers splayed out over the piano and plays, sluggish and loud and polite.

louis has never known how to play, not more than a couple of songs, but harry is a quick learner.

"do you want a drink?" louis asks, and his parents aren’t home and it wouldn’t matter if they were-

“yeah.”

and it goes like that, harry slicing through everything he’s got with his sharp diamond limbs and his tree trunk spine.

  
///

  
louis wonders if the hole he feels in his chest, the harry shaped hole, has been there since forever. because he hasn’t been feeling it before (but he kind of has,) and he thinks that maybe when the seaweed in the shores outside ibzia started to grow and when the birds in the sky started to sail on the wind and when the trees started to grow with glorious life, maybe then, there was made a harry shaped hole in louis so when harry comes across him it’ll feel. and it took so many years and here they are, and it all feels so overwhelming.

harry looks at louis with his ibiza eyes and his cherry mouth plump and soft and quiet, and the stars are above them and he can feel his heart rottening.

it’s like sugar to the bees and like oil to the flame, harry looking at him like that. his heart is getting stinged and burnt inside his chest and he still wants it, so bad.

“i think you make me a better person, louis,” harry says then, sincere and sugar sweet and so naked in the way his cheeks blush and chin shivers.

louis’ stomach feels like a thundercloud and when his eyes land on harry it’s electrical, it’s fucking electrical, and there is lightning.  
  
he wants to brush the hair from harrys forehead, let his greasy hand mess it up, tell harry the truth, that he is only here to break. to shatter, like a diamond with a bomb inside, going off in the hollow where harry has a home in louis chest.

but he saves it for later, instead cups harry’s peach cheek in his own small hand and kisses him, kisses him soft and tiny and like the world isn’t looking at them. as if the stars spotting up one after one on the velvet sky isn’t there for harrys fancy new coats and as if the water bubbeling in the sea isn’t there for louis’ addiction for champagne.

harrys tongue is slow and kind, and it’s sparks in louis’ stomach like glitter and it’s reality in his mouth.

louis smiles, because harry is blushing and stretching the red in his lips into a smile.

“let’s take a walk,” harry says, and they get up.

strolling down alongst the thames river is something louis has done a thousand times before. he thinks about it, as they walk, the glorious thrill of how terrible this will end. about how much it will hurt, once they break.

he thinks about it, as the crunching of their boots speak to eachother and the breathing of their chests hum in harmony— about all those poems about places.

he’s enjoyed so much poetry about how bad it is to kiss people by monuments, (he kisses harry now, next to the bridge) and in parks, (he kisses harry later, on a wooden bench) and in citys, (he kisses harry here, in london, every day). _you’ll taste them on your tongue there, like blood,_ the poets all say.   
louis thinks about how it doesn’t matter. harry has kissed him on his chest, the bucked in place where he breathes, has kissed him on his neck, in the loudness of gulping down champagne.

will he never be able to breath again then, or drink, once harry has broken him?

and the truth is that maybe he wants it, the pain. maybe he needs it so deeply and truly because he needs harry, and isn’t that the point in life anyways? needing someone so completely? finding something you love and letting it destroy you?

  
“when we come home, you should read to me.” harry says, voice clear in the night air.

“alright,” louis says, and he sounds shy but that’s not it, he’s thinking of wich book to read.

he picks james joyce’s _araby_ , and he sits harry down in the creak of dark quietness in the corner of the roof. you can see all the lights in london, and the stars in the sky as a reflection, and it’s all quite stunning.

then he reads, reads without noticing it in that soft voice he’s only ever used for his little sisters, and he reads and reads and reads.

"—her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. my eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. but my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."

  
“it’s beautiful,” harry breathes, a moment after louis is finsished. “it’s great.”

“yeah,” louis sighs, sits in the air between them, looking at the yellow light glowing on harrys face. the ocean boy, the tree boy, the diamond boy. so many fucking metaphores — louis would be an horrible writer.

he would write like he lives, far away from the truth.

there’s too little realness because harry isn’t stardust skin or space cheekbones, he’s all hair and ribs and the texture of his lips and skin skin skin. and it’s true the way he’s growing so fast — up up up — but he’s growing sideways too, in, through, between, past louis, quilting their atoms together one by one and lappning together the harry-shaped hole in louis’ chest. it’s going to hurt to rip the stitches apart, but they do what they always do, they drink wine and laugh bubbely kisses into eachother and they play the piano and louis paints and they save it all for later.

  
///

  
“what are you, guys, really?” niall sighs, twirls with his beer bottle.

louis stares at the yellow colour of the glass. corona. gross.

“who?” he says, but nothing’s ever been more obvious. they’re starkrossed lovers.

“we’re not, like, starcrossed lovers, niall.”

(it’s all lies but louis isn’t supposed to know how this ends-)

niall looks at him, eyes too red to be as drugfree and lovefree and carefree as all the other summers.

“it’s just— it’s just something.”

“yeah,” niall breathes, blonde hair falling rasp on his shiny forehead.

all the shiny shiny shiny has made louis’ head hurt since he’s been fifteen.

“you and zayn, though, what the hell is that?” he spits, weak.

niall cranes his neck towards louis then— and it’s so horrible and intoxiating, them sitting here like two fiftyyearolds, eyes shiny and tired and skin burning and brains humming loud and angry. they need love, to not starve to death. and not this skinny love it is they’re both on with.

“i don’t know,” niall says, and louis whispers a thin “are you hungry?”.

niall nodds and it’s not the usual kind hungry, they both know, and it hurts to go back to the table and sit with zayn and harry and liam and nick and all their other rich friends, and eat and laugh and talk bullshit, but. it’s the way it is. you’ve just got to chew through it.

  
they make love that night, on louis’ big bed, both drunk and happy and loud. it’s soft, green, blue, diamond coloured. harrys skin — harry’s lovely lovely skin, changes colour from shy peach to hot red and gold and louis is so in love, he is.

they’re high on what zayn shared with them earlier, moovements sort of slow but effectfull and when they’re done, exausted, louis breathes something into harry’s wet hair smudging sweat and words together and—

“i can’t be held responsible for you breaking-” a second of air being dragged in rasp and pure-

“-even if i know it’s going to be me that does it.”

  
///

summer in london is nothing to have— so they fly to ibiza, pack their sandals and bright shorts and strange hats and shirts.

ibiza is like a second home to louis, and with the sand sipping through the holes between his toes, louis feels so much more content than on the slipperly floors of his house. he can almost feel the glass splinters in the skin of his feet already, the glass splinters harry will leave. louis runs out into the blue water then— always running away from the troubles of their tangled relationship, and he thinks, that he can only be responsible for, and can only care about— his own shattering.

  
///

  
sometimes he wonders why he’s doing this, really. but for sure, it’s lovely dancing in the foamy, deep blue sea, harry’s teeth glistering in the moon and loud laugh bouncing on the swallowing waves.

(that’s what all this is about— they’re drowning but their laughs can be heard ecoing above the waves after they’re long dead)

and it’s sugar sweet, eating crisp pancakes for breakfast as sun is going up on the other end of the sea. ibiza is so kind to them and harry is so kind to him, too, soft secret smiles and spider fingers on thighs, only for louis. it’s something about getting swallowed down that he likes, (so if harry’s the wherewolf he’s provriding the full moon, he is) something about getting tied to harry, stuck, that he needs, and it’s not sexual, even if he does let harry do that sometimes— lets him tie him up against the wooden bed in their spanish suit, tie him up and bend him until it feels like he’s snapping (and he wants to snap, wants to bend too much and have it all be over with. he wants so much love that it consumes him completely and kills him).

ibiza is all palm trees and golden lights and stone so it’s a bit like louis’ roof top partys but secret.

there’s a cliff, where you can see the splash of the light blue water feircly hitting the shore in the mornings, where louis reads to harry. the grass under their bottoms is stray and rasp but they’re used to it, and it might be louis’ favourite place.

it’s places like these— like ibiza and paris and new york and barcelona, that makes you want to write books. louis wants to write, maybe, one day, but not now, not with harry. it’s all too alive to be described.

so he doesn’t write, (exept on white flanell nights with red wine stains and chest cracking and harry asleep) but he reads, out loud, every morning, on their cliff.

“read me something happier,” harry whispers into the flesh of louis’ leg. “tell me something nice.”

and louis isn’t sure if it’s nice, but he reads harry a poem he rembers from richard siken.

“all night i stretched my arms across

him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing

with all my skin and bone ”please keep him safe.

let him lay his head on my chest and we will be

like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed

to pieces.” makes a cathedral, him pressing against

me, his lips at my neck, and yes, i do believe

his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.”

  
and there comes the silence, the soft silk silence between them when one of them has done something beautiful.

  
///

  
harry paints louis the first morning after they get back from ibiza. it’s september in all it’s glory— deep orange and yellow making his face glow like a young child playing in the leaves. because he is, still just a child, still just fucking seventeen and with seaweed eyes so fucking naive.

  
it’s a softer painting than you’d think harry’d make, because he’s such a splash of colours himself. but there’s olive green and husky sand brown and kind norway blue and white. and it’s louis, all the angles and the mix of stray and humble that he is.

louis has got paint smeared onto his neck, black paint, and it’s almost starting to intox him. it’s like that, or can be, with oilpaint - drowns out your senses a little, makes you a bit lightheaded. might just be harry, though, louis thinks — his concentrated face, stern. looks almost like he’s made of marble, nose and eyes just the shape, that soft, but stony kind. like he’s come from something hard and handled into the sweet shape he is.

louis closes his eyes.   
“let’s get in the bathtub,” harry says, “-get us cleaned up.”

once they’re sitting in the too-hot water of the tub though, without bubbles covering them up— louis doesn’t want harry to scrub off the paint from his neck and hands.

"let what the water takes, go," he breathes, "-but leave the rest." _i’ve been trying to not get washed away lately_ , he wants to say, but harry turns, gushing water around in the tub like he’s moses from the bible in their little world. (how wonderful, louis thinks, to have an universe on their own in here)

  
he leanes against harrys neck, sticky and warm, and then he kisses down his spine until he runs out of spine, and starts over again.

  
///

  
autumn floats by, gets washed away in the never-ending rain of london. they never sit on the roof and read — now in the back off louis’ huge bedroom, on the shiny floor where it meets the big window.

"rosé doesn’t fit the weather," harry says slowly, waving towards the bottle standing between them, a smile tugging at his mouth. such a wound, that mouth. an endless poison. "you only drink rosé during the summer. or if you live in florida."

louis rests his forehead against the window, the rain picking up it’s stomping against the glass, as if to say, _clearly not florida_.

"well. when we we’re in ibiza this summer-" there it is— the taste of harry in his mouth simpy saying the name of the island "-you were christmas coloured and you didn’t fit."

harry laughs, just as honest as he always does, and louis forgets to breathe for a moment, and it feels like he’s breaking already.

harry has always had that fascinating laugh — big mouth open and the sound coming out of him so naturally.

 

louis’ has gone to these expensive partys with his rich friends and his mother and fathers rich friends, all his life, and he’s never known how to laugh. it’s always been too loud and real or too short and bitter, sarcastic.

he envys how easily harry has adjusted into this life.

"read." harry demands quietly. his eyes look up at louis glossy and almost red-rimmed, but louis decides to not worry. only responsible for my own breaking, he chants. something about choosing who to get hurt from.

  
but then he reads, soft voice as usual, pauses of silver between the lines where even the rain out seems to stop it’s heavy beating against the big window to listen.

"of course i’ll hurt you. of course you’ll hurt me. of course we will hurt each other. but this is the very condition of existence. to become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. to become presence, means accepting the risk of absence."

  
he looks at harry, who’s doe seventeen and a half year old eyes are spaced out and his mouth hanging blood red. there’s a small cut in his bottom lip, and louis wonders where he got it. did he write a letter and get a paper cut while licking the envelope? did he bite his own lip, tear off his own flesh? and is that called canibalism or is it just the way the human body goes? who did he write the letter to?

  
harry looks like he isn’t wondering anything, staring out the window. looks ruined, quite honestly.

there’s a voice in louis' mind saying no, not already.

(but it’s okay. harry does look a bit like a flesh wound, like the poison has spread to his whole face. he doesn’t look nice. but he looks like art. art isn’t supposed to look nice, it’s supposed to make you feel.)

louis wonders if he read that somwhere.

  
///

  
it turns out harry acthally did write a letter. louis finds it while shredding through harry’s apartment looking for his expensive mink hair pensels that aren’t even supposed to be used for oil.

he’s been so mean lately, maybe trying to push past that feathery love harry gives him, desperatly seeking for some of that gut and bones kind of love, for some blood deliciously dripping into a glass of champagne — that kind of love.

  
and when he finds the letter, signed to ‘louis’ so he lets himself open it, he can see the drained love he’s been giving harry, between the lines. and he thinks of how he was sitting with niall and wishing harry could love him a little more and a little less painfully, and he uderstands now that those two things, just have to go together.

_  
“dear louis._

_we haven’t been doing much together lately- haven’t been drinking wine on roofs or visiting exotic islands or reading in your many books. i guess it’s because we sort of saved all this for later, didn’t we? we put the pain we’d feel in safety boxes in out mouths and fucked, but when we scream out the pleasure the boxes pop open, don’t they? this isn’t making sense. i’m sorry. i want to say that i don’t want all of this to go to waste._

_i can feel you in my blood and i think you’re poisoning me (but in a good way), because that first day we met on liams roof you kissed me on my throat right where my pulse goes. i think that’s why._

_that very first day, you said my eyes looked like seaweed through saltwater. let me tell you this: your eyes look like the london rain and i still want to love you until my last breath, until you suck the last life out of my lungs.  
you read me something on the thirtyfifth day after we’d met. i have to remember the old poems and pieces now because your reading voice is always so far away, nowadays, isn’t it? anways, it went like this,(and i want you to know my whole body cringed when you read it to me because it was about you and not, whoever this t.s elliot, was in love with.)_

_i remember_

_how seeing the shape of your mouth_

_that first time, i kept staring_

_until my blood turned to rain._

_some things take root_

_in the brain and just don’t_

_let go._

_this was not supposed to be a long letter. it’s not a goodbye letter. i just wish i would have an easier time telling you how i feel in person, but when i’m with you all i can think of is comsuming you, and turning your fingerprints into my fingerprints._

_maybe it’s good that we haven’t really been hanging out, because if we were drinking wine on your roof right now, i worry i’d love you so hard our wineglasses would break and the sky crack and drop all of it’s stars and my would bones break, louis, so hard would i be loving you._

_yesterday was the hundred-and-ninetieth day since i first met you, (and the blood you poisoned with your kiss has changed in its white and red blood cells but i still feel it as much) and i saw how you were looking at eleanor at the party. listen, don’t apologize. just don’t live in my body like it is a summer house. it was just looking, but i know your eyes so well, and i need you to stay with me._

_dearest wishes, i’ll see you when i get back from france,_

_harry xx.”_

louis stands in the dirt-warm air of harrys still apartment for a few seconds, just breathing in and out. he folds the paper neatly, sticks it back into the envelope and puts in on the table, lying with the ‘louis’ up, just like he found it.

walking down the long stair case of harrys apartment building, he can’t stop thinking about why he never kissed harrys cut’ bottom lip that day, two weeks ago or whenever it was. louis can’t remember.

  
after that he goes and buys his first pack of cigarettes since he was sixteen.

  
///

  
december is good to them. harry spends christmas at louis’ parents’ house, with all of louis’ family, and he fits in so well. he’s always been good with louis’ mom, seen the curve of her crumbled eyes as something beautiful instead of something tiring.

louis’ used to have the patience to do what harry’s doing now— talk to her softly, a voice similair to louis’ children-and-reading-voice, about the flowers she has in their big living room, about what green tea does to your stomach, and things like that.  it’s the same way with louis’ father, you gotta lurk it out of them. talk about cars and not about being gay. speak loud enough and smile.  it was when louis started pointing out his mothers secret, stressed morning cigarettes on the balcony and his fathers late nights at the firm with the young girls that it all kind of cracked.

yet, he wasn’t the one to break their relationship and the family. he may be a homewrecker, even in his own stuttering attempts to love, but not in this. he just said things as they were.

 

it snows the last days before christmas, and harry and louis sit in harry’s dirty apartment the day before christmas eve —louis birthday, by the way—, sluggish limbs all over each other.

“this is the ugliest sweater i’ve ever worn,” louis giggles into harrys skin.  
he isn’t sure if he likes this coupely, familiar feeling around them. he wants it intense, shaky, and casuall doesn’t suit him and harry.   
harry smiles with eyes almost closed, long eyelashes brushing over his flushed cheeks. 

“is me being christmas coloured okay, now?” harry says, looking up at louis. they’re breathing in the same speed, slow and thick like you do during winter. 

“yeah,” louis smiles, “yeah, it’s good. you can be our christmas tree.” 

he burries his face in harrys warm neck, hair curling into the holes of louis’ face.

“i used to think of you as a tree, actually.” louis mumbles. it feels nice to mumble and not whisper or breathe out the words. he doesn’t mind them getting muffled by harry on their way out, because most things filter through him. 

“really?” harry says, laughing, and there’s that lightning feeling in louis’ stomach, and it’s dangerous but familiar.   
“yeah, but i used to think of you as lots of things. the sea. a diamond. i guess i like metaphores.”

“that’s not metaphorical,” harry says, pulling a hand through his hair. it’s gotten awfully greasy. “that’s just blindly seeing me in… in inhuman objects, and. in elements-” he trails off.

it hits louis in the gut for a second, that harry knows the way he sees him in everything. he knows the glass splinters he’s been leaving. louis inhales.

“you’re wrong. it’s metaphorical. you… being a diamond. pretty. and breakable. that’s you, harry.” 

“what do you mean, breakable?” harry says. 

“you know. some people’s hearts, they… turn into these sponges, yellow sponges. and they soak up pain like fuckin’ water, and they can’t stop. those hearts don’t break, you know, harry. they, like, rott.”

he’s talking about himself.

“i’m not talking about myself.” he assures harry.

“so what do you mean, that i’m the type that get’s terribly heartbroken and break instead of, like..-“  
louis kisses on harry’s neck, small star kisses to make him stop talking, _god, stop talking, harry,_ but harry’s eyes look hurt.

  
“let’s have a drink, shall we?” he says, then, and pulls himself off of the couch.

 

  
all of their friends gather that evening, in liams apartment, fire lit and christmas tree cled above big, rich presents that aren’t for him.   
louis gets presents too, though, shiny ones and expensive ones that most of them don’t mean. he gets a cake, too, and singing, and crinkly eyed smiles and he does enjoy having them here, he does. nick and eleanor and liam and all the others.

zayn and niall are sitting awfully close to eachother in the big, white sofa, and he envys their love sometimes— their small, skin and bone sort of love, so quiet, even though it radiates from their eyes how much they adore eachother.   
it isn’t troubled, and self-destructive, and doomed, like harry and louis’ love.

"harry said you smoked, nowadays," zayn says, eyes bored but so fucking beautiul. unbroken, and soft at the same time. 

“yeah, wanna take a fag outside?” louis asks.   
zayn nodds. “‘s bad for you, though.”  
louis laughs, dry. the picture of his mothers annoyed eyes pops up in the back of his mind— memories, from when he was younger and didn’t want to laugh the way rich people do.  
“says the actual drugdealer,” louis says, and zayn shushes him. as if anyone doesn’t know.

they walk out on liams balcony, beanies and jackets on. the snow is lying on the ground below them so soft it makes louis sad how cold it is. it’s the same thing with the clouds— you just want to lay down on them, but you can’t, and it wouldn’t feel like cotton candy anyways, if you did.    
it’s cold out, and the sky is starting to set in that deep blue colour of his and harry’s late reading on the roof. louis feels like he consists of only memories and tangled bones and electricity nowadays.

"so," zayn says, handing him the lighter, "it’s getting serious, huh?"   
“yeah,” louis whispers, hopes zayn ignores the beat too late it was.   
” he wrote me this… loveletter, i guess. like, a month ago or something. i don’t think he knows i’ve read it.”  
“hmm,” zayn just says, breathes in the smoke and lets the world wait. he can. the universe lets him. “you worry too much.”  
louis can’t help but smile. he might not have known zayn much longer than niall, but he sure hasn’t made such an impression on the blackhaired boy.

then, _it’s easy for you to say,_ louis thinks of saying, but he just nodds, sucks on his cigarette.

"i think we’re hollowing eachother out, is the thing," he says after a long time. his fingers feel like as if the blood in them has frozen to ice. wonders if that can actually happen.  
“let me tell you what i think,” zayn says, looking out over the feather snow falling, “i think you were hollow before him.”

and that makes louis drink so much fucking tequila that he can barely wake up on christmas eve and celebrate.

  
///

  
“i bought a cat,” harry says, smiles though his cup of tea.   
it’s a good day today, one of those sugary, light days they have sometimes, when eveything isn’t on fire or drowning.  
“really? why the fuck did you do that? now we can’t go to ibiza.”  
“of course we can,” harry says, february lips broken and red. “nick’ll take care of her. he loves cats.”  
“no he doesn’t.” louis laughs, and sips on his own cup. “so what’s it called?”  
he thinks of harry’s apartment — the organized chaos of books and posters and t-shirts, and yeah, if he were a cat he’d like living there.  
“dolores. after the girl in lolita.” he smiles.  
“lolita? harry, i don’t believe you.”  
“what?” he gestures with his tea cup, spilling out a little of the tiny ocean om his pants. ignoring it, harry vigorously continues-“it’s the best book ever written! you’re crazy.”  
“you’re crazy,” louis says. “it’s disgusting. it’s-“  
and then harry stars reading, from the back off his mind, words spilling out from his tongue with so much weight, see. kind of like there’s sideways gravity the way harry worked while was growing into louis— and the words just have to get out, like magnetic.  
“i looked and looked at her, and i knew, as clearly as i know that i will die, that i loved her more than anything i had ever seen or imagined on earth. she was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but i loved her, this lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man’s child. she could fade and wither - i didn’t care. i would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”

  
louis looks at harry, at harry with his blood mouth and seaweed eyes and winter skin. really looks at him, beause he hasn’t done that much lately.   
kind off stunned, he realises, that after so much time spent in the hottness of harrys mouth- he still hadn’t known lolita was his favourite book. it fascinates him, how he’s been consumed and eaten up and how even though he’s been eating harry’s insides too (hollowing him out), they don’t completely know eachother. living that close to someone, knowing a thousand things about someone, loving someones skin so much you’d give them your very own— doesn’t, somehow, mean that that person belongs to you. and maybe that’s it, why harry makes louis so goddamn miserable, merely the fact that louis can lose him. the fact that he has always, spoiled kid as he was, gotten what he’s wanted. and he’s been wanting harry. and harry’s been wanting him. and love is an organic thing. it grows and it rots and it sourns, and there are things happening you don’t know or understand— and louis has never really loved before. 

“what is it, louis?” harry says, still wearing a proud face for reading such a part of the book out loud, remebering every word.   
“i need to get away for a while, i think.”

///

  
after that it’s like louis stumbles down a rocky hill and cuts his feet but in a good way.

  
he goes to paris. he can see why harry went here to get away, too— it’s so endless and anonomys and self-romatic. you walk around on the streets and they’re all wearing black and smoking, all the people, so you’re just like them, but you don’t know where they’re going or what they’re saying or where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to say, and it’s quite relaxing.

and there’s the rain, sinking into louis’ skin the exact way as home, touching him and helping him feel less lonely. he wonders if this is trying-to-not-get-not-hurt-from-harry. because he has that hurt in his body, so there’s now way of getting un-hurt, there’s just a not-getting-more-hurt. and what is it worth, really— to be independent?   
and so he thinks and think, and he drinks coffee and not tea because it’s not supposed to feel like home. he reads and writes, but no letters, not yet, atleast.

harry read a book once, wich he wouldn’t stop talking about— called collective dynamics of the small world network.   
he’d told louis, while they were walking in london, about this theory.   
” it’s very simple. our world is very small. and if you travel to the other side of the planet there is a very high probability that you will bump into someone who lives right down the street from you. scientifically, it is proven that it’s not just chance. we are a whole and everything is connected. the illusion of chaos in which we live is actually quite orderly and definitely linked.”   
-so maybe that’s why, (even though paris isn’t exactly on the other side of the world) or maybe it’s pure coincidence, that he runs into eleanor the fifth day of his stay in paris. 

  
“ouch,” he grunts, as he bumpes into, who turns out to be, her. the rain is falling down from the sky in chunks of water.  
“louis!” she exclaims.  
“eleanor! where are you going?”   
“to my hotel! this fuckig weather, i’m telling you-” and, like, why did he ask? it’s not like he knows every street in paris.  
“-there are no fucking cabs around here, i-“  
“come to my apartment,” louis says, water dripping down is forehead. “it’s not mine, it’s my uncles, but-“  
“yeah,” eleanor exclaims, face all open and wet with running makeup, and. well. eleanor. he tastes the name on his tongue as they run down the street side by side to his flat. it tastes strange, dangerous, and he thinks he’s never tasted it in his mouth before, exept for one time when he and harry were arguing but then it had just tasted harry, like everything does around him.

  
and it’s all quite rushed and smeared after that, them getting into the apartment and her undressing and louis’ eyes reeking over her chest and the goosebumps prickeling on it, angry. and as she’s standing there, stepping into his dry, borrowed clothes, he doesn’t see seaweed or taste blood or think of tree trunks or salty champagne. it’s them, here, now, french coffee, french cigarettes, _eleanor._  
and she’s so beautiful, and so innocent looking, there, in her unmatching underwear and soft pinkening skin and kind eyesockets and brown hair and it’s all just—  
louis just wants her, for a moment, and he’s so fucking clumsy for letting it happen but it does. and this is him, making himself hurt, because he sort of likes the glittery chaos, the merallic chain red gut pain.

(he thinks maybe it’s because she looks so, like that, innocent. like dolores in lolita, young and innocent and girly, and maybe he’s as sick as as vladimir nabokov.)

so they fuck, and that’s it, and it’s. it’s hard to describe— because no glorious words pop up in his head. no tasty, painful, thick words come to his mind and flow through his fingers because it’s just fucking. it’s not like seeing harry for the first time.   
he can write a good couple of pages in his journal about the way harry sleeps, eyelashes light and lips relaxed— and he couldn’t write one about this sex, even if he tried.

"i’ve always liked you," eleanor wispers into the stray stubble striping down his cheeks, and it’s sad, this whole city. louis hates the way he destroys every county and every place with his horrible love for harry styles.

  
///

  
when he gets back he meets harry in his own livingroom, sipping on a glass of pink rosé with his mother. he is after all eighteen now and can legaly drink, but he looks so young somehow. it’s his cheeks, maybe, tinted lightly flesh red, but he looks shattered, too, his lips cracked and his eyes so glossy it can not be simply because of the wine.   
 _he’s found out,_ louis thinks, the moment harry looks up at him. _he found out about eleanor._  
and it all hits him like when you trip in the stairs and the steps hit you in the back of your head, it’s like, spinning, and crashing, and cracking, and this — is this the point where they break eachother?   
“hello, darling,” louis’ mother says, thin fingers desperatly curling around the bottom of her wine glass. probably yearning for a cigarette.  
“i’ll go,” she says, “go cook some dinner,” and when she walks, her figure is so small and apologizing. is this what his father has done to her?   
but then he looks at harry again, shiny eyes and expensive clothes and troubled wrincles wrapping around his beautiful mouth. and it’s the same thing, louis has done to him.

  
so harry finally says it, breaks the iron wire of rich silence between them —“you fucked eleanor in paris.”  
as if it matters where he did it. as if it wouldn’t hurt if it was in russia, or new york, or in space.   
“i’m so sorry, harry, i hate myself for it.”  
and harry sort of falls apart at that, even worse, because he probably was still chewing on that last piece of hope. but now louis has admited it.

and then there is screaming and shouting and throwing and not so much throwing louis’ expensive vases and paintings, as much as the insult-throwing, and louis is hurting so bad.   
his father comes home, breaks them apart from their hopeless clawing on eachother, roars so much louder than louis’ mother tried to— and they finally shut up. fall into eachother, crumbling, like houses, falling against eachother like dust and bricks.   
“i knew this was going to happen,” louis breathes into the air between their foreheads.   
“i love you so much,” harry just says, because it’s true, and because he will forgive louis. and louis sort of shifts, like the bricks of his body has re-arranged themselves, because, what? being broken is one thing, a thing he predicted— but loving, anyways?   
he knew he was going to be the one to break harry, but that he would have the role of gluing him together, too?   
he knows there’s going to have to be a thousand of him, taking care of each shatter of harry, but he will do it.  
“i’m taking responsibility-” he sucks in a sweaty breath, and kisses harrys temple “-for this.”   
and that’s all harry needs to know, isn’t it?

**Author's Note:**

> again, sorry about the angst. atleast nobody died lmao


End file.
